Republican lawmakers fire up anti-abortion crowd

Conservative lawmakers and activists gathered in Washington on Friday to reaffirm their opposition to abortion even as some acknowledged to POLITICO that the GOP’s message to women voters could be crisper.

“I think we need to do a better job in making sure that our message is clear, that we want to help women to be whole and healthy,” Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) told POLITICO when asked about the series of comments failed GOP candidates made about rape in discussing their opposition to abortion.

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Black spoke to POLITICO after addressing ProLifeCon, an anti-abortion conference sponsored by the Family Research Council. The program occurred hours before the March for Life event on the National Mall, an initiative protesting the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. At the conference, Black outlined legislation she is pushing that would defund Planned Parenthood.

“Abortion is not health care,” she said. “It’s not good for women, it’s not good for children, it’s not good for our society.”

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), the other member of Congress who addressed the Friday morning conference, told POLITICO that the fight over abortion has “never been” about rape, and that the GOP should stay focused on “the child.”

“In terms of the party’s messaging, we should keep our central focus on the child,” he told POLITICO, when asked how the Republican Party could maintain control of the narrative surrounding the abortion question.

Their comments come as Republicans gather in Charlotte, N.C. at a winter meeting of the Republican National Committee to chart a new course for the party, emphasizing broader outreach while maintaining conservative principles.

“We can stand by our timeless principles—and articulate them in ways that are modern…relevant to our time and relatable to the majority of voters,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Friday. He added, “And to those who have left the party, we want to earn your trust again. To those who have yet to join us, we welcome you—with open doors and open arms. This is your home, too. There’s more that unites us than you know.”

Franks, in contrast, struck a less conciliatory note when he spoke to the conference, comparing abortion to the December massacre in Newtown, Conn. that killed 20 children and six adults. He quoted large segments of the speech President Barack Obama offered several days after the shooting, and, in praising those words, said they should apply to the unborn.

“And yet this president, in the most merciless distortion of logic and reason and humanity…refuses to apply these majestic words to help these unborn babies,” Franks charged. “I wish somehow Mr. Obama would open his heart and his ears to his own words and ask himself, in the core of his own soul, why his words, which should apply to all children, cannot include the most helpless and vulnerable among children.”

When asked by POLITICO to clarify the comparison between abortion and the events in Newtown, Franks doubled down.

“I believe whether children are shot down in the streets or whether they’re pulled apart in their mothers’ wombs, or whether they’re starved to death in some foreign land, or whether they’re neglected or abused, that all of it comes down to being defined as one of the greatest tragedies humanity ever witnesses,” he said.